


A Serious House

by Dracze



Series: Elseworlds [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Beauty and the Beast Fusion, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Bat Demon, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Depression, Disability, Fairy Tale Retellings, Fluff and Angst, Human/Monster Romance, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Manic Pixie Dream Clown, Mental Health Issues, POV Alternating, Self-Discovery, Self-Hatred, Sign Language, Transformation, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:29:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26696779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracze/pseuds/Dracze
Summary: Adventure in the great wide somewhere can sometimes go very, very wrong. Or: in his quest to become Batman, Bruce Wayne triggers a curse that turns him into a terrifying Bat Demon, confining him to Wayne Manor until he manages to find a way to break the spell. He doesn't see how an obviously disturbed escaped Arkham inmate could possibly help him with that.The magic has other ideas.(A Beauty and the Beast-inspired Batman AU)
Relationships: Joker (DCU)/Bruce Wayne
Series: Elseworlds [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1013289
Comments: 79
Kudos: 151





	1. The intruder

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween month!! 
> 
> This AU's been in the works for like, two years now? I've finally decided to post what I have of it this year to motivate myself to finish it. Let's see how that goes. The rating will go higher near the end.
> 
> And hey, there's already an illustration! Please check out [this amazingly beautiful piece](https://twitter.com/PlasmaRing/status/1229193068496089088?s=20) the incredible Plasma Ring made for this AU. 
> 
> Many, many thanks to everyone who helped me brainstorm this thing over time! You're all superstars and I love you.
> 
> Hope you guys like this one, and as always, I'll be super grateful for encouragement.

The night ripples.

It starts somewhere on the very edge of the property — a single tremble in the wards, quick and delicate, like water shuddering under the skim of a dragonfly. 

Then, it happens again. And again. And again, faster and faster, each new ripple stronger, shorter and louder than the last, until one blurs into the next into a crescendo of tremulous tensing anticipation — 

And then, all at once, they stop. 

The wards go taut. The magic feels out in curious tendrils, casting around like a dog catching whiff of a new smell. And down below, deep under the earth, amid rock and water and darkness, the Bat stirs with a gasp, blinking in disbelief. 

_No._

No, it can’t be what he thinks it is. It’s not possible. The last time air tasted like that — the last time the magic woke up and stirred in his very blood — the last time its nervous, eager static teased the coarse hair over his skin, and copper touched his tongue — 

_No._

But the air purrs all the same, and the stone groans, and then a touchless shudder shakes him deep in his bones. Invisible lightning strikes over the grounds, pulsing in wave after eager wave as it skids down and down and down through dirt and rock to reach him, and it tastes like copper and ash and blood just like the last time and the time before that, and —

The wards have opened up.

_No!_

Slowly, the cave’s deep silence rips into slow, laborious cracks. A pair of great leather wings unfurl, joint by aching joint. Muscles stretch. Claws unsheath. Ears prick, following the onslaught of new vibrations, and eyes struggle to focus, taking in all the different textures of shadow. 

He can’t actually see the magic pulsing in agitated vibrance all around him. He doesn’t need to. It’s there in his bone marrow, and his heart beats to its frantic tempo, and this tells him all he needs to know.

Heavily, he kicks away from crumbling rock. He undusts his wings by beating them in the air, testing their strength, coaxing them to move after such long disuse. 

And then he lifts off, heading up, one thought struggling through to the front of his lumbering mind. 

_Intruder_.

***

“Missed me! Missed me! Now you gotta kiss me!” the Joker calls, splashing around in the river as he turns to face the boats loaded full of Gotham’s finest. “Though of course to do _that_ you’d actually have to get clo — ”

He yelps when the next volley of bullets graze the water dangerously close to where his head bobs over the surface. Looks like he might have miscalculated their range, which, fair enough, his sense of direction isn’t always the most reliable and he’ll be the first to admit it. 

Oh well. He blows the boats a kiss, salutes them for their efforts, and ducks back underwater. Doing his best to hold his breath against the worst of the river’s vast and varied wildlife, Joker swims on with what little strength he can still muster after the trials and tribulations of his latest escape.

He can’t really see where he’s going in the murk down here, but given that it is Gotham river, that’s probably for the best. Besides, the only important direction right now is _away_. The rest, in Joker’s experience, tends to sort itself out. 

Bullets keep cutting up the water behind him, and, lesson learned, he doesn’t pause or even resurface for air. He swims on, pushing his woozy, exhausted husk of a body on and on and on until he finally bumps against what, to his grasping hands, feels like shore. By the time he hoists himself up the dirty wet ground, his muscles are screaming exhaustion and his head is spinning in dizzy pulses, and he has to have a bit of a lie-down to catch his breath once he’s done retching the delights of the river all over the mud.

There are no more bullets. Only the echo of gunshots, which, from here, sound about as distant and clueless as the officers firing them. It would appear that, for the time being at least, Joker’s safe, and has triumphed over The Man once more. 

He tries to bring his trembling hands together to give himself a hearty round of applause, and instead ends up coughing himself into a tight curl, shivering in his soaked jumpsuit. 

After that, Joker makes do with the applause track in his own head, lackluster though it may be. “Thank you, thank you,” he mutters in a voice that’s more rasp than substance. “Such a great crowd. Tune in next week for another daring adventure of Joker, the Great Disappearing —”

He coughs again, and dry heaves some too for good measure. Yeesh. Good thing he’d had the foresight to skip dinner. Arkham cuisine meets sewer meets Gotham River — he shudders at the thought. And then keeps right on shuddering, lying there in the wet cold mud, breathing through the burn in his lungs and the frantic boom-boom-boom of his heart, and waits for the world to stop spinning. 

Not that it ever really does. 

But eventually it stops spinning _enough_ , and slowly, Joker manages to lift himself up on his wobbly elbows for a tentative look-see. 

This far away, what little he can see of the city peeking over the Wall on the other side of the river looks like an old marquee in a neighborhood gone bad, burning in defiance of missing letters and spiderwebs and busted bulbs. Or maybe like a cheap castle replica in the bad part of Vegas. Joker doesn’t remember ever going to Vegas, so he can’t be sure, but he imagines it must look a bit like this: skyscrapers shooting up like towers and turrets if you squint, and thousands of dots of light — used to be billions, but that was Before, now, wasn’t it — that compete with prodding search beams and cast out over the black river towards Joker like a fractured drawbridge. 

Maybe to replace the real bridges that went boom years ago. 

There’s something about that thought that itches at him, irritating some place in his waterlogged, overexcited brain. But all hopes of concentrating and teasing it out instantly fly out the window when Joker finally spots the police boats. 

They still haven’t left. In a display of diligence that’s somewhat out of character for Gotham’s finest — and if he could, Joker would blush at the thought that he merits such attention — they are now patiently combing through the slimy, murky river, with skittering searchlights and hopeful gunshots still echoing over the water. From Joker’s shadowed vantage point they look a little bit like a paddling of ducks, and the mental image of a duck in a police uniform angrily quacking at Joker that he has the right to remain silent has him giggling rather tremulously before he can stop himself. 

Good thing none of the duck-boatsies appear to be getting any closer, staying well out of earshot. But his luck is bound to run out at some point, and there’s no reason to tempt fate. 

Not when he can still see Arkham’s own towers glaring accusing light at him up ahead.

Right! He’s had his rest. Time to make like the Road Runner and beep-beep out of here before any of those insistent searchlights prod him where, in these particular circumstances, he really doesn’t want to be prodded.

With some difficulty, Joker marshals his cold and jittery body to crawl up the mud until he reaches even-ish ground. There’s grass here, which is a welcome surprise given that Joker has lost his Arkham issue slippers somewhere in the sewers. He composes a tearful eulogy for them as he moves to get up, and it goes well right up until he tries to put his weight on his right foot.

The explosion of pain that nearly sends him back to the ground informs him that, okay. So maybe he hasn’t been _quite_ the lucky ducky he thought he’d been.

Also, all this talk of ducks is making him hungry.

“They should put up signs: no running in the sewers,” he complains, catching his balance on a tree — a novel enough experience in itself, and he takes a moment to finger the rough bark in wonder. Then another wave of pain, not entirely unpleasant because pain never is but quite overwhelming nonetheless, distracts him from the strangeness of suddenly being surrounded by trees rather than concrete, and he shakes his head in an attempt to focus. 

There’s shouting behind him, and he can still hear the sirens. 

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he mutters under his breath, and then giggles until he snorts and nearly loses his balance again.

He wipes his nose hurriedly, and pats his new friend the tree in farewell. 

Onwards.

He does his best to hobble along into the strange tree-y, leafy gloom, bare feet sliding over wet grass and dirt and moss and roots and all manner of foresty things. It’s bizarre to say the least, and Joker instantly yearns for the familiar steady coarseness of good, proper, civilized pavement. The scent’s unsettling, too, all wet and crisp and _fresh_ and things. Eugh. 

(Though, when it comes to odors, he’ll allow that he himself is currently the worst offender.) 

He still isn’t too bothered about where he is. Though, this might well be because his head is all oozy-woozy from the thrill of the chase, adrenaline and too much river water versus too little air. Some distant part of him notices that he’s probably in the process of going hypothermic, too, and should maybe possibly ditch the jumpsuit before it freezes to his body. But it’s difficult enough to just walk, what with all the hurt and the confused signals of pleasure-pain his body keeps zapping him with, and while under any other circumstances he’d be all in favor of frolicking through the woods in his birthday suit, he’s just a bit too frazzled right now to properly enjoy it. 

And besides, he’s no amateur. Any experienced escapee will tell you the important thing after a successful jailbreak is to make like a badger and find yourself a quiet little burrow where you can wait out the winter of police discontent. He’s confident he can find one, and then he’ll just find a way back into the city somehow. 

He always does.

So he keeps moving as fast as he can given what seems to be a twisted ankle, and hums and mutters to himself along the way. It’s as much for the comfort of his own voice filling the unsettling foresty silence as it is for the relief of letting _something_ out from the ever-teeming mass of sensation and thought inside him. 

At some point in the middle of that, his mind starts to drift, as is it wont to do. It isn’t long before it casts him as Snow White tearing through the woods in virginal panic. The moment it does, he changes his whole demeanor to really get in character — so much so that it never occurs to him to look over his shoulder. 

If he had, he might have realized that the police don’t seem to be all that eager to actually follow him to shore.

Then again, he might not have. Not when, instead, he suddenly crashes at full speed into what feels like air itself.

… Okay. That’s just a _teensy_ bit strange, even by Joker’s liberal standards.

The Snow White fantasy scattered as though it never was, Joker pauses, clicking his tongue thoughtfully. When he licks his lips, they taste thick with lightning, which is stranger still given that the skies above are as clear as Gotham skies ever dare to be.

He peers into the darkness ahead, and sees a grand total of not much at all. More trees, and bushes, and grass and twigs and roots and stuff. Your normal, standard forest fare. And he’s pretty sure there isn’t a tree in the spot he bounced off of.

Then again, what does he know? Maybe invisible walls of air in the middle of the dark woods are a perfectly normal phenomenon. He’s never heard of such a thing, but then again, he’s a city boy through and through — not exactly an expert on the great outdoors. He’s willing enough to concede that his knowledge of what is and isn’t normal in a foresty setting is, shall we say, substandard.

Curious, he raises his hand and touches the air in front of him.

It resists. 

But only for a heartbeat. 

And then, next thing Joker knows, all his hair stands on end, his whole mouth tastes like a thunderstorm, and something invisible but warm and eager licks him all over, tickling and zapping him with a strange, tingly current. He shivers and giggles out his surprise, and then giggles louder when the hard wall-like spot he’d been touching suddenly goes soft. 

And yields.

 _Interesting_.

The sensation compels him to focus, or at least to try. When he closes his eyes, struggling to catch that urgent little thread over all the static usually crowding his head, he thinks he catches… something.

Something big. Something that seeps into his blood, that makes his skin break out in gooseflesh, that charges him up from head to pinkie toe a bit like the voltage sessions at Arkham, except for where it’s nothing like that at all.

 _Oh_ , he thinks, and then stops.

And remembers.

There’s only been one other moment in Joker’s life that felt and tasted like that. _Exactly_ like that. His heart stutters, and he shivers and tingles all over in a way that has nothing to do with the chill in his bones and everything to do with — well.

With _everything_.

He presses all of himself against the invisible wall made of air, and it gives way for him, and lets him through with another shot of white-bright sparks engulfing his whole body, a warm, warm welcome, before they blink out.

The Joker smiles, and steps through the looking glass.

He pauses just on the other side, and sniffs. The air is definitely colder here. Nippy. Middle January, perhaps, far more than early April he’s pretty sure he left behind.

Which would make sense, seeing as he’s currently standing ankle-deep in snow. 

He’s pretty sure there wasn’t any snow in the woods before. But when he looks over his shoulder to check, he sees it stretching out the path he stumbled through, patches of white growing sparser and thinner the closer they get to the river. 

Well, okay. He’ll go with that. Maybe he simply didn’t remember right. And with any luck, this snow might just mean Christmas. 

The thought cheers him up, and he takes a step forward. The moment he does, mist lifts up over the frozen ground, curling around Joker’s feet and then higher and higher, up towards the treetops. It hovers in tatters of cloudy breath between the trees, marking a path. 

Joker smiles, tasting copper on his lips. He whispers, “All right.”

And follows.

He doesn’t question how the mist appeared, or why it only seems to hang in a clear linear pattern ahead of him and nowhere else. The night thickens around him, getting darker as if the trees themselves are huddling in to close the canopy of branches over his head, and he doesn’t question _that_ , either, nor the way he suddenly feels like he’s being watched, little glowing red eyes, thousands of them, spying on him from the darkness.

Instead, he tries to hobble faster through the snow, using the trees he passes for purchase, muttering quiet “excuse me, coming through”’s. He moves with urgency now, with a purpose of toward rather than away, and he’s still not quite sure _what_ he’s rushing to but he trusts his gut, and he trusts the city, and he’s got a pretty good idea already, and oh please let him be right please please please _please_ — 

And then the trees thin out, as if clearing space just for him. Joker stumbles out into a clearing.

And gasps.

Up ahead, right in front of him, there’s a house. Or maybe a castle, Joker thinks — it’s got the look and size of one, as far as he can imagine, all tall and dark, a silent hulking mass of shadow and stone. The thick, toxic clouds that usually hang over Gotham tear a circle just above it, letting through just enough moonlight to outline sloping roofs, tall windows and chiseled stone, all powdered white in snow, thorny vines growing thick over most of the walls as if to further protect it from sight. 

There should be lightning, Joker thinks distantly. And maybe organ music. It’s that kind of house, and that kind of moment.

Even as the thought appears, though, he’s glad for the silence. 

He might not have been able to hear the leathery crack of wings otherwise.

Now, the thing is, Joker isn’t altogether used to things making sense. He’s usually content to coast along on whatever impulse or circumstance chooses to sweep him up, and doesn’t waste time dwelling on the whys and the wherefores. For one thing, his memory’s patchy to begin with, and Arkham’s made sure to poke even more holes in it so that most of the time, he can’t even remember said whys and wherefores in the first place. And for another, why bother? Sense, he thinks, is for all the sad, boring little people who haven’t had their eyes opened, and who don’t realize the full extent of their cosmic inconsequence. It’s something he has no use for, something he’s given up on, and he’s been all the happier for it. 

This moment, though? This moment of sudden clarity so pure, so thorough and perfect and obvious that night itself goes blazing bright with it? 

This moment makes _sense_ , and through it, Joker’s life starts making sense, too. Because he knows, just like that, that it all led to _this_.

And with this clarity, that nagging little nugget that’s been bothering Joker since he looked on at Gotham from the shore finally crystalizes: he couldn’t see the Bridges from there. The two lonely, solitary bridges the city left standing to connect Gotham to the mainland when they blew up all the others and walled the island away ten years ago. 

Joker didn’t realize then what it meant that he couldn’t see them, but he does now, and he laughs at his own stupidity. He shouldn’t have worried about the chase. The police would never come looking for him here. They’ve probably already given him up for dead. To all intents and purposes, he should be.

In fact, he tastes his own death now as he looks up, opening his arms wide for it, falling to his knees before it as his heart swells fit to burst.

 _Hello, darling_ , he thinks as tears of glad, giddy happiness well up in his eyes.

His death and rebirth, his love, his obsession. Right here, hovering right above him now in his full, terrifying majesty. Fangs glinting moonlight-sharp, bloodshot eyes burning a clear cartoon sky blue, massive leather wings beating air, pushing pulse after pulse of wind to tangle Joker’s hair.

He’s huge, and magnificent, and he blots out the world. 

Which is right, and just as it should be. 

He lands in front of Joker, strong and magnificent and heavy enough to send shudders rippling through the ground and through Joker in turn. His maw opens in a roar, and Joker shivers again, and he wants to — he _needs_ to laugh, but he can’t because — because for the second time in his life his heart’s cracking wide open and his head’s swimming and the noise in his mind is, is, is not, it isn’t, it’s _gone_ , and it’s so much, it’s too much, and his usual coping mechanisms are all useless, useless, useless.

 _I’ve waited for you,_ he tries to whisper, then shout, then cry through a throat that’s suddenly sandpaper dry. _I’ve waited_ years.

The Bat Demon stands before him, drawn up and poised and so much larger than Joker remembers. He roars. The sound rends the night in two, and then the Demon lunges, looming right over him, roaring in Joker’s face, teeth about to snap shut inches from his eyes.

It’s perfect, and far, far too much. Joker’s body and mind are bursting, spilling over and out of him faster than he could possibly keep them together if he cared to try — and he doesn’t. 

But just before he gives in to the blissful darkness rising in his head and heart alike, he finally finds his voice.

“Oh, you’re _beautiful_ ,” he sighs, smiling, and collapses into the snow.

***

The intruder falls, and the Bat stops, echoes of his last roar still pulsing out into the night. 

_... What?_

He stares at the human, his breath heavy, his chest all knotted up tight. It takes him a while, but eventually, he manages to push past the monster’s haze of rage and fear to try and pay attention. 

The intruder’s general shape matches that of an adult male. Roughly. It’s hard to be sure when most of what he can see with these useless monster eyes is an outline of a body with a beating pulse, the veins outlined in stark bright red, and vague, confused blurs of color.

Even to the monster’s eyes, the colors look all wrong. 

The Bat struggles to focus. The fearful rush of his own blood still distracts him, and his eyes are rusty, sluggish, slow with disuse. They’re used to the caves with their textured darknesses, and after all this time spent below, moonlight itself is bright enough to hurt. 

The details still blur and smudge as what’s left of his human eyes fight over the film of _monster_ , but eventually, he starts to make out a little more.

White, he decides eventually. Far too much of it, far too stark. Paint, perhaps? What he takes for hair is some strange, darker color that could be blue or green or red. And another, lighter color, yellowish, muted and grimy with dirt, covers most of the intruder’s body. 

( _Coveralls_ , the human’s mind suggests. _Or a jumpsuit_.)

Slowly, the Bat leans over the intruder, curiosity pushing through rage now that the threat seems to be out for the count. He sniffs, and recoils instantly — the odor of the river and muck and sweat, and something tangy, sharply acidic under it all, is far too much for his heightened senses. He takes a step back, panting, and tries to make himself _think_.

And that’s hard, too. Harder than it should be. Much like his eyes, the Bat hasn’t had much use for his human mental faculties ever since...

Oh. He doesn’t even know how long it’s been. 

Then again, it’s not like he’s had much use for time, either. The monster feels it differently. The human was only too eager to let it, in the end.

He’s paying for it now, frustrated, struggling and pushing and straining from the effort, and it’s like trying to pick out cobwebs from inside the bowels of a clock to make the rusty parts move again.

At least his hearing, much like his smell, is all too acute. Even unconscious, the intruder’s heartbeat is erratic and loud, flooding the grounds with noise they haven’t heard in years. His breath sounds much the same. His body shivers madly, and his heat signature, once the monster’s eyes take over again, fluctuates in a swirling mass of changing color, like it can’t settle on what temperature it’s supposed to be.

( _And_ , the human voice interrupts, _he called you beautiful_.)

The Bat gives himself a violent shake, rejecting the thought. He has no time to ponder it. Any of it. It’s too much effort to try, and it doesn’t matter what the man said, or what the magic is whispering to him. Whoever he is, he’s an intruder, and he _can’t stay here._

Decision made, the Bat moves. He bends and grabs the intruder under the armpits, careful that his talons don’t tear into vulnerable flesh, and lifts him up. He might as well be picking up a bunch of wet leaves, for all the intruder appears to weigh. 

The human in him wonders at that, loudly enough that the monster notices. The monster bristles.

Doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. The man needs to go.

His wings beat hard and fast as he lifts off into the air with the intruder dangling from his arms. He stops as he clears the treetops, and squints against the stab of glaring brightness of the city across the river. 

Gotham. 

His heart picks up, and he shuts his eyes tighter still until his eyelids burn red.

Then he opens them, fixes them on the painful glow ahead, and moves.

Even as he flies towards the river, he can feel the air thickening around him, turning heavy, resisting him — fighting him. Soon, it feels like he’s trying to swim against a current, then through a bog, and it only gets harder from there. 

The magic’s making it clear what it wants.

Too bad.

The Bat keeps flying against it, fighting with all his strength, until he reaches the invisible wards over the grounds — the same ones that betrayed him by letting this new intruder through. 

When he touches the barrier of shimmering air, it burns, and he recoils, staring at the scorched black skin on his hand. 

No. _No_. 

He lets the fury out in a roar that carries over the river. Then, he comes barreling at the barrier, scorching himself on it over and over and over again, the intruder flailing and swinging in his arms like a torn piece of rag.

Enough. He’s let the magic dictate too much of his life — he won’t let it win again. He _will_ break through it if it’s the last thing —

The impact burns his wing. He draws back, panting, before the wing burns up for real and he plummets to the ground. 

The final blow of the fist he bounces against the wards is little more than blind, helpless rage, and it does about as much as his previous efforts, that is to say, nothing. The barrier shimmers defiantly, and doesn’t budge.

 _No!_ , the monster cries, and beneath it, a far more human voice sighs, _Figures_.

He’s mad enough, worked up enough, to keep trying, and he probably would have, right until the magic burnt the skin clean off his bones. The monster wants to, because he’s reached the point where he’d rather hurt than give even an inch, and it’s not like he’s got much to come back to anymore. 

But then the intruder in his arms gives out a moan. It’s hoarse, and pained, and — 

_I could just leave him here._

The Bat hovers in mid-air, wounds oozing smoke, head bowed, eyes fixed on the pulsing mass of light and vein and heartbeat in his arms. 

_If you do, he’ll die._

The monster wants to snap at that. _So what_ , it insists. _They all do. He’ll leave, and then you’ll wish you’d listened to me._

But it’s a half-hearted effort. The human has made up his mind, and the monster knows it won’t win. It knew the moment the intruder’s survival came into question. In this, the human’s instincts are stronger.

For now.

The monster still wants to rage. But with that one decision, it’s suddenly easier for the rusty human brain to start finding more and more footholds and dig itself in. It pushes to the front now, past the red-hot sizzle of instinct, and with it comes logic. 

If he can’t return this man to the city that spat him out, then there’s only one other direction they can go, no matter how much he may hate it. 

_Unless you’d rather float here raging like an animal until your wings give out._

He curses the magic again, one last time, for all the good it’ll do. 

And then the Bat Demon turns back, still clutching the intruder in his arms.

And flies them home.


	2. The fool

_He’s hiding behind the chemical drums, shivering, drowning in the cold sweat of his own fear, certain his life is about to end before it even had the chance to begin._

_Except, no. He’s running now. Running across the criss-crossing web of catwalks, over the drums he’s supposed to be guarding, and they hear him, they see him, the bullets are already flying his way —_

_The're a crash down below. A roar. And suddenly, just for a single frantic, arrested heartbeat, his mouth tastes like lightning._

_That's all the warning he gets before the world explodes._

_He's falling. The catwalk he stood on just seconds ago bursts into pieces right under his feet, smashed to bits by two powerful wings that erupted from under the ground. Metal debris glances off pitch black muscle, yielding to talons sharper than death._

The Bat.

_The world snaps into focus. The taste of lightning floods his mouth. His skin tingles all over, and his heart pounds and pounds and pounds. And as he falls, down down down down, he gazes up at the massive creature shooting through the plant towards the skylights, and he’s still gazing at it when the skylights explode in a shower of glass._

_That’s when thick, sludgy, biting-hot liquid closes over his head, burning into his skin, boiling his veins, gnawing on his bones, painting his world green and then black. But he's still looking up at the Bat even then, still feeling the wonder, the magic, the clarity, the purpose click home and settle in his heart, the world whispering to him, promising and bargaining, and he thinks —_

Yes.

I accept.

_The last thing he sees before the acid burns into his eyes, before he gives his old life back in sacrifice for a new one, is the magnificent silhouette of the giant bat, cut out in black against the moon, melting into the night._

***

Joker opens his eyes, and some part of him goes, _Huh._

He doesn’t quite understand why. But that same part, possibly quicker to wake than the rest of him, wonders at the fact that he still has eyes to open, and a mind to wonder at it, too.

He tries a few experimental blinks, just to settle the matter. Yup, still got eyes all right, and they appear to be working too, even if it takes him a few tries to push through the blurring and the spinning. He decides that what he’s staring at is probably some sort of ceiling, shrouded though it is in shadow, which also comes as a surprise. A ceiling suggests a room. And indeed, further inspection — as he cranes his neck this way and that — reveals evidence to support this conclusion, namely: walls, and a floor, and even furniture, a piece of which Joker’s own person seems to be sprawling upon.

Joker frowns, and once again thinks, _Huh_.

He continues taking stock of the world as it currently stands, and settles on the following: he still has his limbs and all assorted extremities. He also seems to have acquired a blanket — heavy and dusty, half-eaten by moths and suchlike, but keeping his battered and aching body toasty warm just the same. 

Which is a good thing, since a peek beneath said blanket reveals that he isn’t wearing any clothes.

This doesn’t perturb him much. It’s not the first time Joker finds himself naked on someone else’s furniture without any recollection of the circumstances that brought him there. Some things you just learn to go along with, and those situations, in Joker’s experience, tend to be more fun than most. Usually. Say, six times out of ten.

In any case, he doesn’t immediately detect any signs that this should be the four out of ten situation, so there’s that. He gives his fingers and toes a wiggle, just to stretch out — 

— and winces when a sharp red line of pain shoots up from his right foot. 

Oh yeah! The busted ankle! From when he fell in the sewer. Joker grins, proud of himself for jolting this little nugget of memory loose, and sets about patiently unraveling the chain of events from there. 

So. He’s got a busted ankle because he fell in the sewer. And he fell in the sewer because he was running, and he was running because people were chasing him, and people were chasing him because he escaped from Arkham through the old underground basements. 

He doesn’t remember quite _how_ he made the jump from Arkham’s old underground basements to Gotham’s sprawling sewer system. But he knows that at some point in that thrilling adventure, he ended up in the river, and then there were sirens and bullets and police on boats that looked like ducks, and then — trees! — and... 

Oh.

_Oh._

And _him_.

 _Oh my_.

Well, at least that sort of explains the ceiling. Joker can’t make out much in the room on account of it being darker than Crime Alley in the dead of night, but the high, Gothic arch windows definitely match the moonlight-and-snow-dusted manor he’d seen in the middle of the clearing. 

That’s about the only thing that does make sense. He definitely _didn’t_ expect he’d be waking up after the encounter on the edge of the woods, and as soon as he remembers _that_ , the surge of feelings fire-cracking in his chest almost chokes him to death in a way the Bat Demon apparently didn’t.

Or, maybe he did. Maybe Joker _is_ dead, and whatever this is is his personal version of the Great Beyond. But he doesn’t think so. He’s in far too much pain of the boring, mundane kind, and he hopes whatever punishment he merits in the afterlife would be a bit more creative than a pounding headache, some bruises and a twisted ankle. 

It’s also unlikely that the afterlife would bother giving him blankets. So there’s that.

 _Huh_. 

He sits up, and squints into the gloom. 

“Hello?” he tries. “Yoohoo? Mr. Bat Demon, sir? Anybody home?”

Silence. 

Well, now.

Undeterred, Joker swings his legs down to the floor. His bare feet rub against something coarse and scratchy that feels like an old carpet badly in need of a wash, and his toes wiggle over it, pressing down into the sharp, needlepoint threads.

It helps calm that skittish, jittery part of him some, so he does it again, and harder with the right foot to draw out some more of that hot, pulsy pain. The scratch of the carpet against his always-burning feet makes for _such_ a nice contrast of sensation, he simply can’t help but indulge in it a moment, shivering, sighing his pleasure into the cold air. He throws his head back, and that’s when he catches something bright out the corner of his eye.

He turns to peek over the backrest of whatever sofa he’s ended up on, and there, just behind him, glows the faint orange flicker of dying embers, bright enough to stand out in the gloom, too weak to actually lift it. Which means that either someone’s had themselves a lovely little indoor bonfire, or this room has an actual honest-to-goodness hearth. 

And _that_ , in turn, means that not only has his mysterious benefactor brought him to his swanky hacienda, stripped Joker of his river-sodden clothes and given him a blanket, he’s also made sure that Joker kept nice and snug and warm by lighting a fire for him.

Joker wonders if it really was the Bat Demon that did all this for him, and as soon as he does, the mental images have him bending over as he laughs and laughs and laughs. 

Oh dear. He probably shouldn’t. The sound tears through the darkness in endless echoes. The sudden noise, where previously there was only pin-drop silence, feels profane. 

Just for that, he laughs some more. This small act of vulgar rebellion does make him feel a little better, a little more like himself, and eases a tiny bit of the pounding pressure in his temples. He breathes out, and feels more than sees the air swirl off into the gloom in a puff of cold mist.

Steady on. He does want to make a good impression.

“Hello?” he calls again, and quietly delights in the echoes that reply. “Sorry about that, my dear. So terribly rude of me. I wasn’t laughing at you, I was laughing with you! Hello?”

Nothing. 

“Now who’s being rude,” Joker sighs. 

Then, he gathers the blanket around himself like a cloak and gets to his feet, careful to keep his weight off the right foot as much as he can. As lovely as the pain is, it tends to distract him, and he wants to keep his few remaining wits about him for this one.

After all, it’s not every day that you get to go exploring a creepy mansion looking for your one true love.

***

The Bat watches the intruder get to his feet and begin to hobble around the room, impaired and half-blind, and his face pulls tight into a frown.

What is this man _doing?_

Below, oblivious to the Bat’s presence in the shadows above him, the man navigates the gloom, limping and casting about with one hand as the other keeps the blanket around his shoulders. He keeps talking as he does, too. As if the sound of his heartbeat alone wasn’t loud enough.

“Lovely digs you got here,” he declares, just before stumbling over a coffee table. “Oof! Sorry about that. It really is just a bit dark in here, isn’t it? What happened, the city cut off your power? Didn’t pay your bills on time? I know just what that’s like. It’s all right, darling, my night vision is pretty good. I think I’m already starting to get used to it. Oh look, there’s a door.”

True to his word, the intruder starts limping with better aim, even if he still stumbles here and there. He gets to the threshold and passes it, and makes it out into the entrance hall. 

He can’t possibly see much of it, but as the Bat moves to follow him, he still hears the man whistle. 

“Goodness, would you look at that! You’re doing quite well for yourself.” The intruder stands in the middle of the entrance hall, head spinning as he tries to take in the vast space. Moonlight casts in through the murky windows above the main door, bathing him in light.

The Bat narrows his eyes. Even this little light has him blinking, but the human in him is stubborn, and demands that he pay attention. So he tries, reluctantly letting the human eyes take over where the monster’s fail. 

Is the moonlight having a strange effect, or is the intruder’s skin actually… white?

And then the intruder says something that has the human gasping.

“This is Wayne Manor, isn’t it,” he realizes, still turning round and round in his spot in the middle of the hall. “Ha! So the rumors were true. You really have made a nest for yourself up here. Does that mean the other stuff’s true as well? Did you eat the previous residents? Not that I’m judging! In fact, I applaud you. I too believe that we should eat the rich, I just never thought to apply that literally…”

 _What_ , the human wonders, just as the monster demands, _Isn’t he_ afraid?

 _Everyone_ ’s afraid. Every single person the Bat has ever encountered in this form has been, except for Alfred, and even Alfred was, at first. The Bat has come to count on that. It’s made things… 

Not better. Not even close.

But easier. 

Meanwhile, this strange… person is now moving towards the stairs of all things, completely ignoring the great big massive doors behind him that would obviously lead him out to freedom. And he’s still _talking_.

“I’ve never tasted human flesh,” he says to no one in particular, in the same light, conversational tone someone might use to say they never had shrimp. “It’s not that I’m morally opposed to it, mind you, it’s just that I’ve never had the chance. Far be it from me to judge someone else’s diet. In fact, this reminds me of a joke. A vegetarian cowboy walks into a bar in Texas, and… wait, no, that was Arizona. Or was it?”

He starts climbing, leaning heavily on the dirty banister and stirring up clouds of dust, and grunts and heaves as he does, but it doesn’t stop him arguing loudly with himself over whether it was Arizona or Texas before he decides that it must have been a Texas Arizona bar in a different state entirely. By that time he seems to have forgotten he’d been telling a joke and goes off on a different tangent, this one about the merits of location-specific details versus the appeal of universality in stand-up comedy.

“Both have their uses, of course,” he extrapolates as he reaches the first landing, and begins the laborious process of heaving himself higher still. “But the trick, you see, the trick is not to assume stuff, you never know what — uh, ow, you’ve got a trick step here, darling, gotta be careful with that. They really don’t make stairs like they used to, do they? You should see the ones at Arkham, it’s like dear old Amadeus _wanted_ to drive everyone in the building crazy, and hah, and maybe he did, maybe he did, the old cad... But that was before your time, wasn’t it? Say, how old are you exactly? Do Bat Demons even age? Maybe you’ve met Amadeus. Handsome bloke, dark hair, had a dashing little mustache and goatee combo, terribly classy, and those lovely dead murder eyes — no? Oh well. As I was saying...”

The Bat follows silently, clinging to the walls and the ceiling wherever there’s shadow to hide in, his wings folded to keep quiet. Not that this intruder would hear him. Not over the sound of all this prattle. The Bat can barely follow it, and would struggle even if he didn’t have highly sensitive hearing that the constant noise grates upon — it just doesn’t seem to follow any discernible sense. Just prattle for prattle’s sake, an unfiltered stream of consciousness, and it continues as the man reaches the first floor and sets off to the left, choosing the direction at random. 

Still, the Bat recognizes _some_ things. Arkham — he knows the name. Or the human in him does. It makes him feel cold, and conjures up old, dusty images of tall towers and iron wrought gates and black stone, and hazy memories of undefined childlike fear, and a warm voice explaining, _This is where sick people go to get better, sweetie_ …

The memory sears him somewhere unexpected and soft. It hurts. He shuts it out.

He follows the intruder down the corridor.

“Peakaboo! You in here?” the man calls out as he peers into a room. “No? Oh well. Say, this is _fun_ , isn’t it? Like we’re playing hide and seek. I’ll take what’s behind door number three, please, Janet… which seems to be a whole lot of dust and some sheets. Score. Hey, does this house ever end? Why would the Waynes even need so many rooms, anyway? Unless they keep all their dead relatives here, or something else culty like that. Rich people sure love their cults. Think there’s a Bluebeard room, for all the dead Wayne ladies? ‘Cause that’d be classy. Which isn’t to say us plebs don’t have murder rooms of our own! I could tell you stories…”

Why won’t he just _leave_? Anyone in their right mind would, the first chance they got. But this one babbles away like the two of them are fast friends, and is actually seeking the Bat out. And that’s — 

He doesn’t know what to make of this.

Meanwhile, the intruder has run out of rooms on the left side and is starting for the right — towards the library. 

This needs to end, and now. 

The Bat rushes up the ceiling and overtakes the intruder, ignoring his stream of inane prattle. He huddles in the shadows, and waits.

“... and she said, we may be dirt poor, but that’s no reason to not have standards. Standards! Can you believe it? They threw me out, of course, but that’s all right, place was too hoity toity for me anyway. I’ll take a grimy dive over this nonsense any day. At least a good grimy dive doesn’t have delusions of grandeur, am I right? It’s honest about what it is. I’m all for theatricality and fake it till you make it, but there’s a place and time for everything, and you just gotta know when to —”

The intruder’s pale hand reaches out, inches from the library door.

The Bat drops to the ground before him, stands to his full height, and roars in his face.

“Oh, hello,” the intruder whispers, breathless, clutching the blanket tight to his skinny body. “Found you. I win.” 

The Bat bends down to put his maw a mere inch away from the intruder’s face, and roars again, making sure to show off his fangs. He spreads out his wings far as he can in the too-tight corridor, just to be sure.

When he draws away, the man starts _clapping_.

“Oh, that was beautiful!” he says, eyes wide and bright in the gloom, mouth stretched in a huge, unnatural grin big enough even for the Bat to make out. His voice trembles, and his heart beats three times the pace of a normal human, but it’s not in fear — he doesn’t stink of fear. 

Instead, over that toxic-acidic stench that still clings to him, he gives off waves of _arousal_ when he gushes, “Absolutely stunning! You really had me going there for a sec. Give us another one, won’t you baby? Encore!”

_... What._

Enraged now, the monster roars again, drawing back his paw, making it clear that were he to bring it down, it would slash the man clean in half. 

And again, instead of running like any sane person would, the intruder falls to his knees, opens his arms wide, and closes his eyes. Still grinning. Still smelling excited rather than afraid, the same way he did back in the clearing.

As if it’s an invitation. As if it’s to say, _Go ahead._ As if he _wants_ to be —

The Bat freezes, and suddenly, it’s impossible to move.

A minute passes. Through the rush in his mind, the Bat catches the intruder opening one eye to peek at him.

He says, “You didn’t eat me.”

And it sounds _accusing_. 

“Is it because I didn’t say you could?” The intruder asks, staring up at the Bat openly now, still kneeling. “You don’t eat people without their consent, is that it? You’re a gentle-bat. I respect that. Well, you can eat me! Go right ahead, I don’t mind! Or, wait, is it because I’m too skinny? Fair enough, I don’t blame you, I probably wouldn’t want to eat me if I were you either. Well, that’s fine, just feed me some pasta, it always gets me bloated and then you can — hey!”

Dry now, out of his waterlogged clothes, the intruder weighs even less than before when the Bat picks him up in one paw, over the blanket, and roars in his face again. His clawed fingers meet around the span of a tiny waist. He can feel the frail body shudder, and this close, the scent of acid hanging around the intruder is potent enough to overwhelm everything else. 

The eyes that fix on him look wide through the blur, though the Bat doesn’t think it’s in fear, even now. Not when they’re dark like this, like they’re almost all pupil.

Unbelievable.

But it doesn’t matter. The Bat tucks the man under one arm, stomps down the narrow corridor to the staircase, then opens his wings and flies down to land heavily in the middle of the entrance hall.

“Well, that was.” The intruder seems to be having a hard time catching his breath, his excitement thicker than ever, cloying sour-sweet in the stale, dusty air. “Yes, indeedy. Whew! Are you going to eat me _now_? Was the space up there too tight for you, big boy? Wait, what are you —”

The Bat puts the man on the ground, grabs one stick-thin arm, and drags him to the door. He slams it open, then throws the man out on the steps outside.

“Wait!” the intruder cries, scrambling to get up, the blanket slipping off him before he can catch it again. “No, no, wait, just — can we _talk_ about this? I’m injured! I’ve got a busted ankle, look, and, and — and I’m still hypothermic! If you’re not gonna eat me, let me just —”

The Bat is about to slam the door in his face, but the intruder throws himself to the ground, his body landing between the two heavy wings before they can shut together. “Please,” he wheezes. “Please, you can’t leave me out here. I just need a few days to heal up and then I’ll be out of your fur. All right? Please, darling.”

The Bat stares down at him, breath heavy. He can’t see the exact expression on the human’s face, but the tone in his voice tells him enough. 

_Now_ he’s afraid. But it’s still not the Bat he fears. 

He fears that the Bat will _leave_ him.

This is wrong. All wrong. He doesn’t know what the magic was thinking but he _can’t_ let it go on. If the intruder won’t leave willingly…

The magic buzzes again, a distracting, insistent itch just under his skin. The Bat looks up and out, over the silent grounds, and sees a cold red shimmer. 

Okay. The warning is clear: the magic won’t let the Bat carry the intruder out. And if so, it may not let the man leave on his own, either. 

_And he really is injured_.

The monster bristles against that. It’s weakness, pitiful human weakness, and it’s hurt them both before. 

_So what will you do? Leave him out there in the snow to freeze, or starve?_

“Please,” the intruder whispers, moving a hand up, fingers open, as if to reach out to him. 

For him.

No one has ever raised a hand for the Bat except to shield their face from him in fear — or to hurt him. Even Alfred and Dick never tried to — 

_Weak!_ , the monster roars, but beneath it, the human has once again made his choice. 

Not that there ever was much choice to begin with.

The human within the Bat sighs, giving in. 

With a frustrated, dejected grunt, he throws the doors wide open. The intruder seems to be reaching out for him again. The Bat unfurls his wings and lifts up before he can get close enough to touch.

He flies up and over the intruder, still prone on the ground, and then he speeds on ahead, over the forest, the glow of Gotham ever too bright behind him. 

He leaves the door to the Manor ajar. 

That’s gotta be enough. 

***

Joker sits up, curling up on the threshold, watching the Bat Demon fly away. 

He’s shivering all over, and his mind is screaming, and his skin — his heart — 

He can’t hold it in any longer. He doesn’t see why he should.

He hugs his knees close, presses his forehead against them, clenches his entire body until every muscle in his body goes as tight as it can, and laughs until his voice gives out.

Magnificent. The Bat’s _magnificent_. He’s everything Joker dreamed of for so long, and more — so, so much more. 

And he’ll be back eventually, wherever he’s gone. 

So Joker will wait. 

Even if the Bat Demon really doesn’t want to eat him, that’s fine. He might change his mind, and until then, Joker’s determined to prove to him that they are destined to be together one way or another. If not literally, then…

He shudders at the thought, and hugs himself closer, giggling the last of it — desperation, arousal, excitement, love — into the night.

Then, he struggles to his feet, bringing the dirty blanket back around himself for warmth. He limps back inside, to the room he woke up in, the one with the hearth. For the first time in his life, he wishes he’d been a boy scout; then at least he’d know how to light a fire without matches. 

But he’s not going to let the lack of theoretical knowledge stop him from trying.

“Soon, my love, you will see,” he sings, happily to the empty house, letting his voice carry up into the upper floors. “You and I were meant to be.”

Just as he makes it into the room with the hearth and the sofa — he’s already dubbed it The Blanket Room — the window looking out towards Gotham lights up. Joker gasps, and hobbles closer, touching his hand to the dirty glass.

The dust and grime cover it so thickly that he can hardly make anything out, but he knows what this particular light means: they’ve lit the Bat warning. 

He grins, heart swelling fondly as he imagines that beautiful, majestic silhouette soaring over the city. He’d only seen it from a distance before, back when he would wait for the warning to come on, only to defy the curfew and scramble up to the tallest roof he could find, and he’d sit there, waiting, tracing the sky. And then at Arkham, climbing the sanitary fixtures so he could reach the tiny window in his cell and glue his face to it, longing for a glimpse.

Well, just look at him now! Him, the Joker, getting all up close and personal with the most stunning, magnificent, beautiful creature in all of existence! He’s certainly moved up in the world, and he’s never been happier.

He can’t wait to see Batsy again. 

***

The Bat returns just before dawn, and doesn’t bother flying in through the house. Instead, he circles the abandoned neighborhood until he chooses one of the cave entrances scattered around the grounds, and clears the tunnels until he reaches his own cave beneath the Manor.

It’s silent here. Dark.

 _Home_.

He latches himself to the rocky roof, furls his wings around himself, and closes his eyes.

But sleep is elusive, and eventually, he growls in frustration and gives up on it to fly restless circles around the cavern instead. The smaller bats ignore him, used to his presence by now, and at times, in the silence, he thinks he can hear noise coming from the house above. 

It sounds like _singing_. 

Of all the strange people Gotham has to offer…

But there’s nothing for it. The magic is stubborn, and there’s no disputing its whims. All he can do now is wait it out.

He stalls until his internal clock tells him it’s nighttime before he lets the mounting frustration propel him up the stone stairs and into the library. He doesn’t _want_ to see the intruder, and with any luck, he won’t. But if the man is to stay here for however long it takes for him to heal, or for the magic to come to its senses…

He clutches the supplies to his chest, and the monster chides him for it. _Weak,_ it mocks, and the human counters, _Necessary_.

He plans to simply drop the bags on the floor of the entrance hall, where they’ll be visible, and leave. Maybe the magic wants the man to stay here, but that doesn’t mean the Bat and he have to interact. He still has a few limited choices left to him, and tonight, he’s going to draw a line.

Or at least, that _was_ the plan, but he must have made too much noise. He scarcely touches the floor when the intruder pokes his strangely-colored head out of the parlor, his breathing and scent all over the place and thickening when he spots the Bat. 

“Hello there!” he calls out, sounding happy of all things, and the sound of his loud, loud voice _hurts_. “Had a good hunt? I saw the light go on over the city. You naughty boy, have you been out terrorizing the good people of Gotham again?”

The Bat drops the bags on the floor and lifts off. Caught or not, he flat out _refuses_ to indulge this idiocy any further than he has to.

“Wait! Is this all for me?” The intruder limps over with surprising speed for a man in his condition, and drops to his knees to examine the bags. “Well, well, well, would you look at that. You really _have_ been a naughty boy. This looks like the contents of half the city’s pantries!” 

The Bat’s ears twitch, and he has to fight the urge to turn away. He _has_ stolen the supplies — a first aid kit, a few boxes of matches, cans of non-perishable food, water bottles, bags of chips and whatever snacks were close by for him to grab — from a chain supermarket warehouse. It was the logical thing to do — there’s simply no other way for him to obtain anything suitable for a human to eat. 

So why the hell would he suddenly feel guilty over it now?

He turns to leave. 

“Wait!” the intruder calls after him. “Won’t you join me? Only, and this is embarrassing, but I seem to be having some difficulties lighting the fire. You handled it so expertly last night, and I wondered…”

Oh for goodness sake. The Bat growls a warning, which doesn’t seem to bother the intruder one bit.

“Oh well, it never hurts to ask. I’ll just keep trying. Trying builds character! And I think there’s a kitchen over there so I’m gonna assume I can use it, yes? And look, you’ve brought me matches. How lovely.” His too-loud voice melts into something gentler when he adds, “I’d still love it if you could join me, though. I found this huge dining room just beyond, fit to seat a whole regiment, and wouldn’t it be _such_ a shame if it went to waste?”

The Bat growls again, and flies over the staircase.

“Oh, alright then, another time maybe? But there’s just one more thing: we haven’t been properly introduced!” 

The Bat stops in mid-air, despite himself. He glances over his shoulder at the man still kneeling on the floor. 

“They call me the Joker,” the intruder says, grandly, bowing low with an absurd vaudevillian flourish. “I’m your biggest fan. What about you, gorgeous?”

The Bat turns and flies up to the first floor corridor, then marches off into the library, headed for the sanctuary of his cave. He makes sure to barricade the library door behind himself, just in case. 

He still hears the intruder — Joker, a ridiculous name for a ridiculous character — call after him, “Okay, then I’ll just call you Batsy!”

The Bat shuts the cave entrance behind himself with a slam, and then flies through the blissful, soothing silence of the underground tunnels until he’s too tired and raw to think. 

At this point, he can only hope the man will eventually come to his senses and leave on his own. After all…

They all do.


	3. The complication

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the kind, kind reception so far! <33#

_“Please, sir. Perhaps you shouldn’t —”_

_“I have to, Alfred. I need to be stronger. This can make me stronger.”_

_“You don’t know_ what _it’ll do. It might be dangerous. You don’t need to —”_

_”Yes, Alfred. I do,” Bruce says, right before he opens the casket._

_The flash hurts his eyes. The casket falls to the ground with a clatter. And then —_

_Pain._

_It starts off cold, an itch in his bones, a taste of lightning in his mouth that trickles down his throat. Then, a throb that vibrates out into his blood and muscle tissue. It seizes him up, bending him out, squeezing down on his organs from the inside until he can’t move, can't breathe, and somewhere to his right, Alfred calls out his name._

_The casket, cracked open at his feet, oozes shimmering blue smoke, wafts of it curling in the air, thickening around him and then closing in. Pushing inside him through his pores, his eyes and ears and nostrils, anywhere it can reach, and then spreading, filling out his body, prodding at his mind, at his heart, like it’s searching for something. Poking around. Looting. Piercing, deeper and deeper and deeper, until it stops, until it finds something long buried in his heart, a dark, raw, sore, hurting place, and then it crows in triumph. And lashes out._

 _And cracks the place inside him wide_ open.

 _The wound in his heart oozes. Black blood drips, and then seeps and floods out out out like toxic fumes to clog up and drown everything else, his blood, his bones, his skin, and then the shimmering smoke absorbs it and swirls triumphantly around his heart, clinging to it, covering it like mould and burying into the wound —_

You, _it whispers, its voice thick and deep like darkness itself_. You’ll do.

_It slithers into the wound in his heart, and then —_

_The pain explodes, his bones crack open and stretch and re-form, his skin bursts and turns inside out, his back splits open, and he’s burning, burning, burning, and he thinks he can hear someone screaming —_

_”Bruce,” Alfred says what feels like a whole lifetime later, once he finds himself able to register the world again, and then the quiet word hurts his ears. He blinks, and struggles to make out Alfred’s face, but it’s blurred, and his eyes are itchy, and he tries to talk but he can’t, he CAN’T —_

_”Oh, my boy,” Alfred whispers. “What have you done?”_

***

Two weeks later, the intruder calling himself the Joker still hasn’t left.

The Bat doesn’t see much of him — he doesn’t go up to the house anymore if he can help it. 

But he can _hear_ him. Singing. Laughing. Yelling. Babbling, chattering, going on and on and on, making so much nonstop _noise_ , even in his sleep, that it’s impossible to mistake the Manor for empty anymore. 

The Bat thinks maybe this is on purpose. But he can’t imagine what the purpose might possibly be, except to push him away, which seems the furthest from the Joker’s mind. 

Instead, he keeps _reaching out_ to the Bat (calling him Batsy, just like he threatened he would). Talking to him, whether the Bat is there to listen or not. Inviting him to meals. Serenading him. Telling him jokes.

Offering himself to be eaten, time and time again. 

And the terrible truth is that ignoring the pest doesn’t seem to be working. The Joker appears as determined to interact with the Bat as the Bat is to avoid him, and they seem to be evenly matched in stubborness.

He also doesn’t appear to want to _leave._ No, not this one. Any normal person would be desperately devising means of escape, or at least starting to go stir-crazy, but the Joker seems completely happy puttering around the empty house, listening to his own echoes, tangling up in cobwebs and old, dusty ghosts, waiting for — 

Whatever the hell it is he wants. 

And so, like it or not, the Bat has to fly to the city twice more for food, water and other essentials he belatedly realizes Joker might need in a house that’s been cut off from gas, electricity or warm water for years. Joker, damn him, catches him each time when he leaves the supplies in the hall; each time, he tries to make conversation, and each time, he calls the Bat beautiful.

The Bat thinks there's something very, very wrong with this man, and the human in him agrees. Especially when he catches him outside one night, mucking about in the snow barefoot during a brief break in the winter storm, putting finishing touches on a snowman next to a crude drawing of a bat, and not once trying to venture out into the woods beyond. 

The Joker spots him then and waves, hopping up on his injured foot. 

The Bat grunts and flies away as fast as he can, the magic humming mockingly around him, reminding him that he can’t avoid his new problem forever.

He still tries his best though, and continues his disappearing act into week number three, which is when things finally come to a head. The third time he drops the supplies in the usual spot, Joker catches the Bat before he can disappear. As he usually does.

This time, though, Joker stops in the threshold to the parlor…

And doesn’t say anything.

This alone is strange enough that, despite himself, the Bat hesitates for a beat before flying away.

But it seems that there’s only so long Joker can stand _not_ making noise, and sure enough, he breaks the silence before it can settle between them for good.

“Well?” he demands. In his peripheral vision, the Bat catches movement that suggests Joker's twirling in place. “What do you think? Don’t I look good enough to eat?”

His tone is flirty, but when he giggles, the pitch of it is higher and even more grating than usual. 

It’s probably that which makes the Bat turn his way.

He can’t see much. Just the usual mass of color, heat and veins where Joker stands, pulsing loud to the rhythm of his heartbeat in a chaotic swirl. Joker’s pulse still beats faster than is healthy or normal for humans, but at least the colors look healthier now, steadier, no longer on the edge of collapse. 

The Bat can’t perceive more until he makes the effort to focus, and even then, when the colors change from vivid fluorescent heat into something a human might perceive, it’s still just a blur, a mass of unnatural white and… 

There’s something new there, draping over Joker’s body. Something dark. Red? Black? Dark blue? Or maybe purple. It’s not like the Bat’s useless eyes can pick out anything more specific than that. At least the monster vision is vivid and bright; the remnants of his human vision give him little more than smudged, confused watercolor.

“Come now, darling, don’t leave me hanging,” the Joker entreats when silence once again looms dangerously close. “I’ve been working on this all night. Do you like it?”

He twirls again. But he’s standing too far, and it’s dark, and —

Curiosity wins out, and the Bat takes a couple steps closer. 

“And they call Hitchcock the master of suspense.” Joker gives another high-pitched giggle, definitely nervous now. “Come on, not even a peep? Or a growl? Talons-up?”

Two pieces of dark fabric seem to be hanging over the Joker: one down his body almost to his bare feet, and another one loose across his shoulders like a shawl. A tunic? Where would he even get…

“You don’t mind me making myself at home, do you?” The Joker asks in that same high-tight voice, still giggling intermittently. “I meant to ask your permission, Batsy, I really did, but you never call, never write. And I couldn’t find my jumpsuit — say, what did you do with it, anyway?”

The Bat watches him in silence. The Joker fidgets, twisting his hands in the fabric hanging off him.

“I do hope you burned it, love,” he babbles. “That thing stank worse than an East End public lavatory, not that you’d have any experience with those. I should hope. So, I… _requisitioned_ those lovely lilac curtains from one of the rooms upstairs. The one with the pool table. It’s not like _you_ were using them, and it’s my color! Not that I mind either way, but, ah, I thought you might be more comfortable around me if I put on some clothes. Plus, I think your central heating’s busted, dear, it gets _quite_ chilly in here sometimes, especially with that eternal winter thing you seem to have going on outside. So I thought to myself, well, how’s about a little homemade fashion? The place is lovely, but she’s overdue a touch of glamour. So I made this little number, and personally, I think she’s sickening, but I’d appreciate your feedback. Thoughts?”

The Bat tunes out most of this tirade, out of both habit and self-preservation — his ears have had some time to adjust to the new levels of volume the Joker’s brought with him, but they’re still far too sensitive to bear it for long — and it’s easier this time. 

Mostly because his mind appears to be stuck on one thing. 

The curtains. Joker has made himself clothes, out of… lilac curtains.

_Father kept saying he hated them, but Mom claimed they made the room come alive._

The Bat growls, shaking his head against the memory, taking a step back. No. He doesn’t need this. He can’t — 

“Oh no,” Joker sighs. “You’re mad, aren’t you? Were you attached to these? I can put them back the way they were, no problemo. I only cut them up a teensy lil’ bit. It _would_ help if you could point me to the rooms you don’t like so I can see what I can do there, so I don’t… Hey, Batsy. Darling. Are you alright?”

The Bat doesn’t realize he’s been making soft whimpering noises until he hears the question, and then he bristles, and takes another few jerky steps away. The Joker follows, slowly, the dark material of the curtains trailing over his body. 

“Hey, hey, it’s all right,” he croons, putting his hands up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you, handsome. Want me to put them back? Is that it?”

The Bat looks at him, opening his maw, and a plaintive, rumbly sound comes out. He shakes his head and makes more of the noise, trying to say — trying to show — he doesn’t _care_ about the damned curtains. 

He _shouldn’t_ care about them. 

_Weak._

“Okay, so that’s not it. Duh! Of course it isn’t, why would _you_ care about some silly old curtains, am I right? Are you hurt? Did you step on a nail or something? Want me to kiss it better?” Joker comes closer still. “Batsy. Talk to me.” 

The Bat growls at him, then snaps his teeth shut and jerks his head away, wings coming in tight around him. His whole body’s rigid, and he doesn’t know _why_ it’s affecting him like this, it shouldn’t, he’s — it’s been so long — 

“Oh, darling.” Joker steps closer again and gazes up at him, not a hint of fear anywhere in him. “You can’t talk, can you?”

The Bat growls again, softer. Hunches in on himself. Bares his teeth.

And, before the monster in him can protest, he shakes his head. 

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize.” Joker is no longer trying to get closer, which is a small mercy. “But it’s all right. You _can_ understand what I’m saying, can’t you?” 

The Bat looks down at him, suddenly tempted to withdraw, and deny, and act the beast the city believes him to be. But there’s no use pretending. He confirmed as much with his behavior long ago, and if he hadn’t, him reacting to Joker’s questions just now would have given it all away. 

He nods.

“Good.” He can hear the brightness of a smile edging back into the Joker’s voice. “Of course you can. You’re hardly the mindless monster the schmucks back home like to think you are — not that it’d make you any less wonderful, mind you.” 

He takes another step closer. The Bat takes a step away. 

“Which reminds me,” Joker says, undeterred, “I’ve never properly thanked you for all the goodies you’ve been bringing me. So,” Joker takes a deep bow, “thank you, Batsy. You really are a gentle-bat.”

The Bat stares down at this strange, strange man, and doesn’t know what to do.

The monster wants to lash out, to hurt and scare in self-defense before this can go any further. Before he gets hurt, the way he knows he will. _Don't give an inch. Don't give him an opening. Fight the weakness, fight the longing, fight yourself or we're both doomed. You_ know _this_. It struggles, and trashes, and tries its hardest to keep the human out, to stay in control, to stop whatever's on the verge of happening, because if it does, it'll change everything.

 _Good_ , the human whispers. _Maybe it's time_.

He pushes, hard, and takes over, and then moves the Bat's massive hands to slowly sign, " _You’re welcome._ "

The Joker gasps. His hand reaches out to touch. 

The Bat snarls, unfurls his wings and lifts off, well out of reach. He takes off and flies out the door before the human makes him do anything else stupid, like stay, and have an actual conversation. 

Not that fleeing now will do him any good; the damage is done. He’s already revealed too much. 

The monster in him regrets it instantly.

The human isn’t so sure. 

***

This latest revelation doesn’t deter Joker any. If anything, it improves his mood by heaps and bounds, and he’s singing an excited ad-libbed little ditty when he carries the latest supply of chow over to the kitchen, where he dumps the bags on the massive oak table.

It’s not that Batsy doesn’t like him, as Joker had started to fear after he failed over and over again to engage his paramour in anything beyond a single solitary grunt.

It’s just that Batsy’s _shy_.

And that’s adorable. That’s so adorable, in fact, that Joker has to drop to the floor, lean against a table leg, and giggle it out into his dusty curtain shawl, just luxuriating in the hot pink fog of _Awwwww_. 

It takes a while. But how could it not? Batsy’s _perfect_ , and Joker’s heart can barely stand beating for it.

But oh, there’s no time for lovelorn swoons. He needs to get ahold of himself and prepare. There’s so much to do! Now that he’s unlocked this new crucial information, a wealth of possibilities spreads out before him, and his mind is spinning overtime with ideas that he’s itching to try, preferably all at once. 

Nevermind that he only knows the barest of bare bones of sign language. He’s a fast learner, and anyway, there’s ways they can make it work until he gets it. He’s just gotta go on another scavenger hunt through the house, which shouldn’t be difficult — the Waynes sure loved to hoard ridiculous amounts of junk. 

And then — _ohboyohboyohboy!_

Then they can _talk_.

*** 

It takes almost two weeks for the Bat to show himself upstairs again, and when he does, Joker’s waiting for him. 

He sits on the floor of the entrance hall, cross-legged on top of something a different color than the floor — a blanket, maybe — and his face lights up with his unnatural wide grin when he catches the Bat’s shadow over the staircase. 

“There you are!” he calls, chirpy and excited and, as usual, far too loud. “I’ve missed you.”

And that, alone, isn’t surprising. 

What _is_ surprising, on the other hand, is that Joker’s trying to awkwardly sign the words as he says them out loud.

He’s got the gestures all wrong. Mixed up with a generic hello. But even stiff as they are, the patterns his hands make are far too controlled and deliberate to be mistaken for anything else, and wide and big, as though to make sure the Bat sees them for what they are.

 _See?_ the monster chides him as the Bat reluctantly flies down the stairs to land in front of Joker. _Told you we’d regret it._

The human keeps silent, and that seems to be just fine. Joker is obviously determined to say his piece, and he’s got enough words for both of them. 

“Look, I’ve been thinking about ways for us to communicate,” he announces, rocking back and forth over the blanket. “I know you understand me, but I’m positively _dying_ for some back and forth here, you know? I’m not really cut out for this hermit life. Now, I know a _little_ bit of sign language because they had a library at Arkham and I was bored and there was this hilarious guy who — anyway, I taught myself so I could tease him but then they released him and I lost interest.” 

As if to illustrate his point, Joker’s no longer trying to sign along, and is instead gesticulating wildly the way he usually does, without rhyme or reason. The Bat grunts.

“Yes, yes, get on with it, I know.” The Joker wiggles, his entire body a blur of excited movement, still rocking in place. “I’ve got a whole new reason to learn now, and I was hoping you’d help me? What do you say, big boy?”

The Bat stares at him.

“Well, sleep on it,” Joker allows magnanimously. “In the meantime, I thought we could try something else. Say, buddy, can you read and write?”

And here, the human's first instinct is to snap. Of _course_ he can read and write — he’s a grown, educated man! Whyever would anyone assume otherwise? 

… Except. 

Except he can’t _now_ , can he? Not while he’s got those massive, taloned paws instead of hands, with fingers too huge and thick to hold any pen or book — and especially not with his useless monster eyes. He can only theoretically read Braille now, and while there’s some Braille books in the library, his massive unwieldy paws make it so much harder to discern the text. 

And besides, that’s not going to help him and Joker communicate. It’s not like the man can _write_ in Braille. And the Bat doesn’t feel like getting into the details to explain any of it just to preserve some silly, impractically human notions of pride that he shouldn't be harboring anymore, anyway.

But. God.

But the humiliation of it still burns him up inside out like it hasn’t done in ages, and he just.

He isn’t ready for the feelings swelling up in him in a rush, all at once, rocking him off-balance.

Once again, he thinks he should just back off and leave. This burst of humiliation is only the beginning, and so are the rusty twinges of old frustration at being reminded of all the things he can’t do anymore. 

He thought he’d laid those to rest. That he’d reconciled himself to all the changes and limitations of the curse ages ago, that he left all those acute hurts behind, and wouldn’t feel their stab so keenly if only he just learned not to think about them. 

But apparently, ignoring them isn’t quite the same. And there’s going to be so much more of that sweeping, overwhelming _hurt_ if he encourages Joker any further.

But... 

_But you’re lonely_ , the human whispers, gently. Kindly.

The monster doesn’t have the words to argue, and only repeats, _Weak_.

Eventually, it’s the human in him that, once again, propels the giant, unwieldy body to move. He swallows the foolish remnants of pride, hard though it is. He gives a soft grunt, and points to his eyes, then stretches his paws to emphasize their size. 

He shakes his head and signs, " _Can’t._ " 

“Oh!” Joker claps, and the Bat flinches at the sharp, stabbing noise. “Oh, I get it! Nearsighted, are you? Well of course you are, you’re a bat! I’m so sorry, darling, sometimes my brain just steamrolls right on ahead without even considering — but okay. We’ll find a way to talk lickety-split. How about… how about...”

The Bat regards him as Joker trails off, giving _thinking out loud_ a whole new meaning as he hums and haws and mutters to himself while the Bat’s chest still burns and reels with emotion, and his ears hurt and hurt and _hurt_.

And maybe that’s why, eventually, he does what he does. Just to make the noise stop. It’s certainly how he’ll explain it to himself later, to quiet the noises of _Weakweakweak_.

He taps on the floor. 

_STOP._

Joker doesn’t catch it at first. He’s too lost in whatever’s going on inside his head. But then the deliberate pattern of the taps catches his attention, and he goes silent, and his eyes go so wide even the Bat can see it. 

Slowly, the Bat taps out the word again. 

Joker gasps, and jumps to his feet so suddenly the Bat has to stifle an instinctive defensive response. 

“You know Morse!” Joker exclaims — practically yells — and the Bat winces at the volume. 

He taps, _YES._

And then, on impulse, he adds, _TOO LOUD._

“Oh _really._ ” Joker puts his hands on his hips. “I’m too loud, am I?”

 _He understands_ , the Bat realizes, and his heart swoops so hard and fast that for a moment, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He didn’t think it’d actually _work_. 

Maybe he hoped it wouldn’t. 

But it _did_ , and now, for better or worse…

He truly isn’t alone anymore. 

( _For how long?_ the monster wonders. _How long until this one leaves? Until we push him away?_ )

The human in him isn’t ready to consider all the implications. Even this much interaction, after years of solitude, is too much. He needs to focus on the now to make it through this. 

He gives a deliberate nod, and then taps, _QUIETER._ He points to his ears and, after another brief moment of conflict, he adds, _SENSITIVE._

“Oh,” Joker says. And falls silent. 

It’s the longest he’s ever _been_ silent, barring the time he was unconscious. He doesn’t quite move, either, or if he does, it’s too small for the Bat to notice. 

It should be a relief. Physically, it is. 

But there’s something so profoundly strange about that, and profoundly _wrong_ , that suddenly, the Bat doesn’t know what to do.

It only gets worse when Joker’s heart rate, already elevated above even his norm from their brief interaction, starts _pounding_. And then — 

Joker folds in on himself. The Bat doesn’t think there’s a better word for it. He can’t see clearly, of course, and Joker’s expression is still mostly a blur, but the way he stands there one minute and collapses to the floor the next makes it look like he passed out. 

Before the Bat can reach out though, he hears the giggle. It’s smothered, like Joker’s trying to stop it first by keeping his mouth shut against it and then by shoving a hand into his mouth — but it bursts out anyway, like hiccups, and builds up until it sounds like Joker is choking.

“I’m sorry,” he manages, weakly, still fighting off what sounds like a fit. “It’ll — just a moment —”

The Bat waits, giving him time. He’s worried enough now that it’s easy to squash the impulse to simply abandon the guy and fly off, protecting his ears from the painful bursts of sound. 

Eventually though, it dies down. 

“I’m _so_ sorry, darling, I swear I wasn’t — it wasn’t on purpose.” Joker’s voice sounds hoarse now, scraped raw, and far softer, like he’s still struggling to contain something too big for him. “It’s just that… you see, being quiet, that might be a bit of a problem for me.”

The Bat considers him, suddenly wishing he could see the nuances on Joker’s face. 

_EXPLAIN_ , he taps.

Joker takes another moment to compose himself. It sounds like he needs it, with the stifled coughing and straggler, leftover giggles still bursting out of him in fits and starts. 

But then he starts rocking back and forth on the floor again, curling in on himself.

“Not much to explain, honestly,” he tells the Bat. “You see, darling, I’m crazy.”

And here, the Bat’s wish that his useless eyes would let him pick up on the nuances of Joker’s expression takes fierce, urgent root. Joker’s tone comes out bright and glib, but his rocking isn’t, and neither is his pulse, and the Bat just wants to understand what the hell is going on. 

Resigned and newly frustrated, he folds his wings around himself, and slowly lowers himself to sit on the floor in front of Joker. 

_EXPLAIN,_ he demands.

“Just a certified whackjob,” Joker says in that tight, lilting, grating voice. “A regular cuckoo nutcase, and I’ve got the Arkham cell to prove it. And they don’t even know what’s wrong with me! They’ve got a list of hypotheses a mile long, but it’s all guesswork, you know? A game of match-the-symptom, throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. I’m not gonna get into all of it with you, darling, it’d bore you to _death_ , but momma, they just don’t know what the _hell_ they’re doing up there.”

 _Oh_ , the Bat thinks, while the human inside him heaves an irritated sigh. An Arkham inmate. The curse magic saw fit to admit an _Arkham inmate_ to the grounds. And not just any regular inmate but a fugitive, too, judging by the state of him when he arrived — he must have swam across the river, and there’s only one reason the Bat can think of for why anyone would do _that_.

Well. At least that’d explain the sodden jumpsuit, and the smell.

But Joker isn’t done. 

“So, now, there’s _a lot_ wrong with me. Like, a lot,” he declares, once again gesticulating wildly, his voice getting louder on every excited word. “But the relevant thing! The relevant thing, darling, is that I just don’t do well with silence. Like, I’m what they call hyperverbal — ha, yeah, I know, you’ve probably already noticed that one, right? Very little filter on this old noggin, darling, practically none at all. And my mind goes _fast_. We’re talking Road Runner speeds here. The Flash. Whatever. It’s a lot to handle on a good day, and I don’t like to feel like I’m alone with all that, so when it’s quiet, it’s just — it’s bad. So. The way I see it, we’ve got two problems here. One!”

He raises a hand, and carries on.

“The silence. You like it. I hate it. The noise hurts your ears. The silence hurts my brain. So that’s something for us to work around. And two! I don’t know sign language yet, and writing messages is out, so for now, the only way we’ve got to communicate is Morse, but like, that ain’t ideal either, is it? The tapping’s still _noise_. It’s probably bothering you in some way too. And for me, there’s just no way I’ll be able to shut up and translate everything I want to tell you in simple Morse. It’s _wayyyyyy_ too slow and limited and it _just won’t do_. So… it’s a pickle.”

The Bat grunts, irrationally but acutely stung, and gets up. _"If it’s such a problem…"_ he starts signing, resenting his own petulant reaction, but Joker gets to his feet too, and makes as though he wants to touch the Bat before he can think better of it.

“Hold up, hold up,” he says quickly. “I didn’t get that, but you look mad, so I think I get the sentiment. It’s okay, darling! We’re all adults here, aren’t we? We’ll work something out. I’ve already got a few ideas I wanna try. Just give me a lil’ time, okay? And in the meantime, how about this: I’ll do my best to try and control my volume when you’re up here with me. I’ll only let loose once you’re gone. And if it gets too much anyway, just, um, okay, just tap three times on anything. That’s gonna be our safeword, how about that? Just three lil’ taps, like so —” he taps on his thigh — “and it’s all, zip! For as long as I can handle it. Sound good?”

That… 

( _That could actually work_ , the human points out.)

But the Bat isn’t ready to admit as much. Tonight’s poked enough fresh dents in his scabbed and bruised pride as it is. Dark things are stirring awake inside of him, and he needs to get out of here before they take root. So he gives a short grunt, neither assent nor protest, and turns to leave. 

“Now wait just a minute here,” Joker calls gently after him, making an effort to modulate his voice to something quieter. “Looks to me like we’ve just struck a deal, hm? Wanna make it official, partner? Shake on it?”

He sticks out his hand, and smiles, and —

And for a moment, the Bat almost considers letting him touch. 

_No_ , the monster growls, and brings his foot down, and for once, the human doesn’t try to argue. The Bat turns on the spot and flies out through the main entrance as fast as he can, leaving Joker — and the stupid, reckless, irresponsible flash of temptation — far behind.

But the night is unforgiving, and his mind works against him, having him replay the conversation over and over and over in his head until he examines every little bit of it thrice over. The feelings Joker's stirred up don't let go. And, underneath it all, neither does the worry…

Nor the loneliness.

_Fuck._

It gets bad, and by that time he makes it back to his cave, a new emotion catches hold of him and holds firm: guilt.

He does his best to struggle against it. To hold onto some vestige of pride, defiance, and restraint. But the trembling sound of Joker's tight, high voice is impossible to ignore anymore, and with a roar, the Bat realizes he has no choice. He has to give up yet another inch if he wants to know a wink of rest.

So he kicks the wall of the cave, three times, until he can hear a tremble go up through the foundations.

***

And up in the Manor, in the blanket room, Joker hears it.

And smiles.


End file.
